Small Groups – Week of November 4
Preparation (do this prior to attending your small group)
Read: Romans 8:28
Reflect: Think about the passage you’ve just read. What does it mean? Do you truly believe it? Does this passage bring comfort to any areas of your life?
Pray: That suffering would not harm your faith. Pray that in the midst of suffering you would turn to God for comfort and trust that He is using your suffering for good.
Small Group Discussion Questions
1. How do you respond to physical pain? Are you heroic? A martyr? A silent sufferer? Do you share your suffering with everyone you meet? Are you a whiner? Feel free to share any stories that demonstrate your PPSS (physical pain suffering style).
2. What has helped you deal with pain in the past (any type of pain)?
3. Have you ever encountered anyone who believed that suffering had no place in the Christian life? If so, share some of this person’s thoughts.
4. How have you suffered for being a Christian? Share a story or two. In the light of suffering, what keeps you going as a Christian?
5. Read John 15:18-27. Share one thing which stood out to you from this week’s sermon. What were the main points from the message?
6. Read Hebrews 5:8. Amazingly, Jesus learned obedience through suffering. What implications does this have for
your life?
7. Read Matthew 26:36-46 and Luke 22:39-46. By looking at how Jesus dealt with difficultly here, what principles can you discern to apply to your own life in the midst of suffering?
8. Read Acts 7:54-8:1. How does God use suffering to bless the church?
9. Read James 1:2-4. How do trials lead to your Christian growth? Discuss the steps James lists thoroughly and share personal examples of how you have seen this happening in your own life. Have you ever been able to go through a trial with joy? Describe this experience.
10. In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes: “We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the ‘intolerable compliment’. Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life—the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child—he will take endless trouble—and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumbnail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.” In your opinion, does C. S. Lewis do a good job of showing that suffering is actually evidence of God’s love and not of His indifference? How might reading this help you with suffering in the future?
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